


Drift (With) Me Baby One More Time

by beelzebumblebee



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Pacific Rim AU, the boys are boneheads
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 06:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1294006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beelzebumblebee/pseuds/beelzebumblebee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is the last person Enjolras would've expected to be drift compatible with. And yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drift (With) Me Baby One More Time

Technically speaking, there was no reason for Les Amis to pack up all their belongings and move, en masse, to the Shatterdome, France not being anywhere near the Pacific Ocean and therefore not vulnerable to Kaiju attack. Try to explain that to Enjolras and he would just glare at you and launch into a lecture about civic responsibility and standing up for others and France may be his home, his love, his reason for living, but people in South Korea and Australia and the Philippines needed defenders, too. And anyway, who’s to say that the Kaiju, once they’d leveled all the major Pacific cities, wouldn’t move on to other oceans? Enjolras couldn’t risk it. It took waking up in a cold sweat from a nightmare about a category IV strolling through the Louvre to convince him to book a ticket to Hong Kong, stroll into the Shatterdome, and offer his services.

The others came with him, because of course they did. Some of them offered protestations about school and work and family, but when they day came they were all at the airport with their noble leader. Grantaire was the last to arrive, clearly hungover and carrying only a ragged backpack slung over his shoulder. When Jehan patted him on the back with a smile he mumbled that it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be, anyway, and the Shatterdome was as good a place to waste one’s life as any.

Shockingly, those running the Shatterdome weren’t in raptures at the thought of recruiting a group of starry-eyed students, not one of whom had any prior military experience. One, Joly, looked like he was about to pass out at any moment. But it only took four days of Les Amis sleeping in the parking lot under the pouring rain to convince a tech with a soft spot for kittens and sunsets and pathetic, shivering losers (the tech thought fondly) to let them in. She made them promise to stay away from the Marshall and not cause any trouble.

Combeferre said “Yes, absolutely, of course we won't,” while Enjolras stood behind him mentally, if not physically, crossing his fingers. And his toes.

For the next few months Les Amis made themselves useful—cooking, cleaning, hauling Jaeger parts around. For all the brass’ initial hesitance to let them in, it turned out a group of young, in-good-health citizens with a fire for saving the world and, most importantly, no desire to get paid, was a pretty good thing to have around. Eventually Joly got drafted into the Shatterdome’s medical team. Bahorel’s strength found use among the mechanics, where his brash attitude and love of drinking earned him the grudging goodwill of chief tech Eponine. He dragged Grantaire along to some poker games, and that was all it took for Eponine to poach him away from janitorial work and coffee runs to adopt him as her own. Combeferre discovered a love of dissecting and peering inside pieces of Kaiju. The rest of them occupied their time with odd jobs, save Enjolras, who occupied his time with odd jobs and bugging the Marshall about letting him at least try to pilot a Jaeger.

The Marshall refused, of course, “Because we’re talking a billion-dollar piece of equipment here, Evan”—the Marshall did, in fact, know Enjolras’ name, but he pretended he didn’t, just to piss him off—“and one that the fate of billions depends on, besides. We’re not going to let a college student take a test run just because he wants to be a hero.” Enjolras pointed to his success in the simulators, to his dedication, his willingness to die, but it was his stubbornness—or, according to the Marshall, his tendency to be "an atrocious pain in the ass"—that finally got him somewhere. If Enjolras could find someone with whom he shared sufficient drift compatibility, the Marshall promised, the pair of them could have a go in the rusty old Mark-3 that had been sitting pilot-less since a disastrous run-in with a category III in Seoul. If Enjolras couldn't, that would be the end of it. No piloting a Jaeger. No fighting Kaiju. No saving the world.

The Marshall only made the deal because he fully expected Enjolras to fail. The kid was headstrong, to say the least, and while that didn’t necessary preclude one from having the necessary discipline to pilot a Jaeger, the fact that he tended to steamroll people in conversation was a decent indicator that drift compatibility would be hard, if not impossible, to find.

As he strode into the combat room, Enjolras reflected that he knew the Marshall was trying to set him up for failure. And that only made him more determined. Because so help him God, he was going to find someone to bash some Kaiju heads in with if it killed him.

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfic! More forthcoming (and longer chapters, but I had to bite the bullet and get this out there). Drop me a kudos if it doesn't suck. My ego is fragile. Visit me on [Tumblr](http://beelzebumblebee.tumblr.com/) if you're so inclined. Thanks and cursing go to [Luchia](http://luchia13.tumblr.com/), who let me ramble at her about this fic and then actually made me start writing it. Damn her. Further thanks (but no cursing) to [thedornishman](http://thedornishman.tumblr.com/), who set me on this road in the first place. You are both awesome human beings (unless you are DINOSAURS).


End file.
